Opinion

Why is the Caribbean still debating the importance of IT?

Published

8 years ago

March 9, 2016

While it is widely known that having some IT skills is crucial in today’s world, there is a concern that it is not being reflected in Caribbean schools. There were news reports on the Chairman of the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC), Sir Hilary Beckles, stressing the importance of Information Technology (IT):

INFORMATION technology should be just as important as Mathematics and English and every Caribbean citizen should know how to use a computer, says head of the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC), Prof Sir Hilary Beckles…

The CXC chairman and UWI vice chancellor stated: “Information technology should be as equally as important as English and Mathematics for our social and economic development.”

(Source: Daily Express)

In this day and age, the importance of IT should be beyond dispute. It thus seems odd that the Caribbean still needs to be convinced, per the CXC Chairman’s call.

However, the impetus for his concern was the wide disparity in the number of students who had sat the January 2016 CXC examinations in IT versus Mathematics: 1,048 students for IT; over 11,000 for Mathematics. Moreover, it suggest two things: first, IT has not been made compulsory in schools – like Mathematics and English, thus the low examination entrants; and second, and perhaps more importantly, in the CXC curriculum, IT is still a very discrete subject, which has not been – to any degree – integrated into all other disciplines.

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